Abstract:
Rising rates of urbanisation in Africa, without attendant improvements in critical
infrastructure, have occasioned gaps in the provision of basic services in cities
across the continent. Different systems and scales of service delivery — decentralised
and centralised, public and private — coexist and often compete in urban
spaces but rarely connect in ways that ensure the needs of the poorest are met. Our
paper interrogates the value of transdisciplinary research for bringing actors in these
systems together to co-produce knowledge for inclusive and sustainable outcomes.
Drawing on empirical data from two complementary projects in four African cities,
we demonstrate the possibilities for facilitating this kind of knowledge co-production
among system actors in the food, water and energy domains. We show, through
a comparative approach, elements of the co-production process that enable more
responsive engagement by traditionally detached policy actors. From our findings,
we generate a framework that local researchers serving as ‘knowledge intermediaries’
can use to stimulate research-policy-society interactions aimed at fostering sustainable
and inclusive service delivery across Africa. By synthesising the findings
from local case studies into a widely applicable framework, our analysis informs
both the theory and practice of transdisciplinary sustainability research in the African
context where the imperative to bridge gaps in methodological innovation and
service delivery is high.
